THE ANNOUNCEMENT LAST WEEK that British authorities
had arrested 14 people in an inquiry centered on
terror training at an Islamic school and adjoining
property in the idyllic landscape of Rotherfield,
East Sussex, was good news. Then came the bad news:
the Jameah Islamiyah school had been used 15
times by U.K. law enforcement for diversity and
sensitivity training of its officers.
A friendly proximity of government officials and our
terrorist adversaries is nothing new either in the
United Kingdom or the United States. Still, how is
it that a headquarters for radical Islamist
indoctrination could be repeatedly used for training
of British officers without anybody noticing
something wrong in the school environment? Sussex
county police responded with typical bureaucratic
inertia, stating: "We are not embarrassed by our
involvement with the school but, inevitably, this
will have to be reviewed in the light of the
weekend's events."
Media reports indicate that suspects in the school
inquiry include 42-year-old Abu Abdullah, a former
associate of Egyptian-born radical preacher Abu
Hamza al-Masri. Al-Masri is a supporter of al Qaeda
whose hands were blown off and replaced by hooks and
is serving a sentence of seven years in a British
prison for incitement of racial hate and murder.
(The United States unsuccessfully sought his
extradition for attempting to set up a terror
training camp in Oregon.)
Even more unsettling is that the Yemeni ambassador
warned British authorities in 1999 that the Jameah
Islamiyah school was used for terror training.
Government investigators concluded then that
evidence for the accusation was lacking and that no
laws had been violated.
THE IMPULSES TOWARD political correctness,
diversity, and sensitivity which led to the
Sussex police's current embarrassment have been
felt in the States, too. On August 14, Salam
al-Marayati of the Los Angeles-based Muslim
Public Affairs Council (MPAC) held a press
conference to praise a British Muslim tipster
involved in the recent, transatlantic airline
terror conspiracy. The event allowed al-Marayati
the opportunity to publicly rub elbows with the
local British consul general and representatives
from the FBI, the Department of Homeland
Security, and the Los Angeles. Sheriff's
Department.
But it is not clear that American law
enforcement should want to appear with
Al-Marayati. On the afternoon of September 11,
2001, al-Marayati told L.A. radio station KCRW
(as noted in the New York Times of
October 22, 2001), "If we're going to look at
suspects we should look to the groups that
benefit the most from these kinds of incidents,
and I think we should put the state of Israel on
the suspect list because I think this diverts
attention from what's happening in the
Palestinian territories so that they can go on
with their aggression and occupation and
apartheid policies."
Nevertheless, MPAC is frequently promoted by
official Los Angeles. The organization's "senior
adviser," Maher Hathout, will be honored on
October 5 by the Los Angeles County Commission
on Human Relations for his service to the cause
of "human relations." In 1998 Hathout condemned
U.S. retaliation in Afghanistan, after the
bombing of American embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, as "illegal, immoral, unhuman,
unacceptable, stupid, and un-American."
A half-decade after September 11, it's now time
that the diversity racket which brings Western
authorities together with terrorist apologists
be broken up--on both sides of the pond.
Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to
The Weekly Standard.
!["Salaat ul-janaza [Funeral service] of Sayyid Muhammad ibn Alawi Al Maliki, The Grand Mosque in Mecca, October 2004](../images/janazahmalki.JPG)
